We focused this session on the brief interaction between God and Cain at Genesis 4:9. By this point, Cain had committed the first murder: in a fit of jealousy or rage, or just plain “stinking thinking,” he had decided that he could elevate his own position by eliminating his competition – rather like the figure skater Tanya Harding arranging to take out her top competition, Nancy Kerrigan, before the 1994 U.S. Figureskating Championships.
Immediately after the verse that tells us Cain has killed his brother, God confronts the murderer: “Where is Abel your brother?” And Cain responds, “I do not know.” He has more to say, but that’s worth a moment in its own right.
It’s not true; Cain knows exactly where Abel is. This direct lie, given to God’s own face, is something new. When Adam and Eve had disobeyed the one command from God and eaten from the forbidden Tree, God confronted them in a similar way (Genesis 3:11). The first question, “Where are you?” is paralleled here by the question, “Where is your brother?” God is asking about physical location. But is that all? In a way, is not God also asking about psychic location? “What has happened to you? Where have you gone (in your mind)?”
Surely, in both cases God knows the answer, as the development of each dialogue shows. Yet he asks the question. Why?
Willow and I were discussing the hesed of God a few days ago and she made an observation I think may be key. She said: God wants to be in conversation with us. Regardless of what we have done, regardless of where we are in our lives, however organized or messy our situation, God is prepared to start with us where we are right now, today, at this moment – and walk with us toward a better way of living and being in the world.
“Where are you?”
“Who told you that you are naked?”
“What is this you have you done?”
“Where is your brother?”
God invites us to confession, to make a clean break with our past – not by denying it or hiding fr0m our darkest natures, but by facing the truth of our situation and our decisions. God invites us to tell God the worst that we have done: “I heard your voice and I was afraid because I disobeyed you;” “I listened to my natural impulses rather than to your Word, and sinned;” “I was angry, so angry, and I struck and killed my brother.”
The Bible holds that words have power. It is by the Word that God made the heavens and the earth; by the spoken Word that God created every living creature, including humankind; it is God’s Word, vibrantly alive in Jesus, that gives him power and authority over evil. It is the power to shape words and to speak them that God has given to humankind. And it is by forming words that we form our intentions; it is by speaking words – by making declarative statements – that we put ourselves in motion and make things happen. “I shall build a new tower on this corner.” “Let’s feed the hungry and clothe the naked.” “I want to be good and to do good in all things.”
When God asks us questions, he is looking for us to speak. To declare the truth of our inmost being, so that we can purge ourselves of evil through the expelling of words that are imbued with the evil we have been and have done. When we confess “I have murdered,” “I have hated my sister for twenty years,” “I was so angry I couldn’t think straight,” we separate ourselves from the power of those words to dominate our souls. We gain a measure of objectivity that allows us to think a measure more clearly.
And when we have said our piece, we can listen to God’s Word to us; we can better hear for having spoken; for having confessed our truth. In that speaking and hearing, we begin a conversation with God, through which God can introduce new words to us – words of peace and joy, of forgiveness and new beginnings, of opportunity and hope.
I think that’s what confession was meant to be in the Catholic tradition, before it was ritualized so much that it became a rote formula. It is what many churches are looking to recapture by developing accountability groups, in which church members gather in small groups to honestly face and confess their failures. By admitting to one another where two and three are gathered in Christ’s Name, they are confessing to God, to expel evil from themselves, and to hear a word of forgiveness, acceptance, and new direction. It is a way of being in conversation with God through Christ’s worldly Body, the Church.
So God asks Cain, “where is your brother?”, knowing what has transpired. It is an invitation to confession; to starting down the road of restoration, of spiritual healing.
And Cain lies. “I do not know.”
And then Cain challenges God: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Am I responsible for him? Does he need a nursemaid? Is your precious Abel so important that I have to give up my own plans in order to watch over him? Is my life of so little value to you that it should be spent walking behind Abel to make sure he doesn’t trip over a stone? Is he a child, though fully grown? Do you expect me to look out for him rather than for myself? I’m not his keeper; let him look out for himself, just as I have to do.
It’s not what Cain says that’s so abhorent, but what he implies. He implies that we are all in the world by ourselves and for ourselves. It is the exact opposite of community, of family, of everything meant by kinship. It speaks of life as a struggle, as a competition for scarce resources, as a problem that has to be solved.
Cain does not live in the Garden of Eden. Even the vestiges of the Garden are absent from his life and experience. He lives in the desert, struggling to live the life God said would be Adam’s fate for his disobedience:
Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. And you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return. (Genesis 3:17-19).
Remember: Cain is the farmer. He lives that curse on a daily basis. Tied to the soil, he might even envy Abel’s freedom to wander the woods and fields, to shepherd, to see new countryside on a daily basis. For Cain, life is a daily struggle against weeds and drought, pests and thieving animals. Out in the field every day, alone, bent over a hoe or watering bucket, plowing and harvesting by hand, burning in the noon sun, arriving home exhausted at sunset – it is easy to understand his jealousy and frustration, it is easy to imagine evil thoughts slinking around the edges of his garden, insinuating themselves into the rows of soybeans and grain, working their way up his tired legs and sweating wrists, and settling into his fevered brain.
“Cain, where is your brother Abel?”
“How the h*** should I know? He’s your precious. Am I supposed to be my brother’s keeper, too?”
These are the words of a wholly alientated man: alienated from God, from his peers, from his work, and from himself.
These are the sentiments of a person living, without a sense of hope, the “unrelieved tragedy” Phyllis Trible spoke of in her description of the world after disobedience. This is the world where all that matters is surviving; where surviving is seen as taking for yourself what someone else might get if you don’t first. It is the world where you must be prepared to kill to live, where all people are potential threats, and where known threats have to be eliminated.
“Cain, your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground – from the exact place where you have spilled it.”
“Cain, there are consequences for what you have done. You have separated yourself from the community of Man. Now you will wander the earth as a fugitive and a vagabond; no one will welcome you, and even the earth will turn from you. You have broken the cosmic order. You have allowed evil to consume you, and you have stepped beyond the pale.”
From the smaller disobedience of Adam and Eve has sprung this greater rupture of the fabric of Life. Once humankind began the slide from unity, harmony, delight and fulfillment, murder and alientation were not far away.
It is easy for us to be consumed with ourselves: with our own interests, with our own plans and desires, with our own survival and prosperity, with our own appetites and sense of importance. And it is is easy to rationalize our behavior on the ground that if we don’t look out for ourselves, no one will.
I am not going to argue that that’s not the case; that we do not have to look out for ourselves. The Bible does counsel us to fruitful labor and self-reliant industry. We are encouraged to work industriously, and even to produce an excess. There is no evil in comfort or prosperity, or even wealth.
But we are also called to community. We are not monads, we are women and men who belong to other women and men, and who cannot help but get inextricably twisted up in one another’s lives. We are whole only when we are involved with others, and they with us.
We are called to understand our need to balance individual achievement with communal responsibility and accountability. Yes, we are our brothers’ keepers. We are not solely – perhaps not even primarily – the keeper of our brothers and sisters, but we are not solely – not even primarily – isloates either. This is why Scripture does not condemn the rich – unless they decieve the poor or use the law unjustly in their pursuit of riches.
It is also why Scripture calls upon the rich to leave the edges of their fields ungleaned, so that the poor may come and gather food (as in Ruth), why James advises the wealthy to also use their wealth to buy up heavenly real estate through caring for others. It is why Paul chastizes the wealthy who arrive at the communion feast first and eat up the good food while the day laborers are still in the field, hungrily working; and why Jesus cautions against thinking that all you have to do to be safe is store up worldly grain in earthly silos.
The Bible does not call us to assure an equal outcome for every person (the communal church in Acts is a remarkable exception to the general practice, and is recorded for that reason [Acts 2:40-47]). The Bible does not even guarantee that those who are obedient to God will live a more secure, more prosperous life than those who do not (just ask the Jewish people). After all, Jesus declared both that those who suffer unusual calamity are not more evil than the general population (Luke 13:1-5), and that God makes the sun shine on the evil as much as on the good (see Matthew 5:43-48, esp. 45).
What the Bible calls us to is a balanced life: we are uniquely made to fulfill a purpose intended for us by God. In that way, we are on our own – though I do not think we can discover and achieve that purpose unless we are in conversation with God.
We are also made for community: we need other people, and our individual purposes are linked to and intertwined with the purposes of others. Together, each pursuing our own purpose in conversation with God, we discover joy and opportunity in our intersections and cooperations. Every person we meet has a gift for us from God; our task and joy is to discover and receive that gift, while offering ourselves to whomever can receive us as a gift, in turn.
Am I my brother’s keeper? Not the way Cain meant it. I do not believe I am called to sacrifice my God-given purpose to nurture and care for you. But I am called to fulfill my God-given purpose – and that will always lead me to be concerned for the lives and journey of others. Not every other person, but many other persons – some of whom I have not yet even met. And not every need, but some needs – those that I am equipped to meet, by the grace and provision of God.
May God lead us into prayer; and through prayer into the fulness of our purposes on earth. And through the pursuit of our reasons for being, may God fulfill His purpose for this gathering of people called Ludlow United Church. Amen.
